Extending public relationship-building through the theory of politeness

• Published in: Public relations review Vol. 45; no. 3; p. 101784
• Main Author: Theunissen, Petra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Silver Spring Elsevier Inc 01.09.2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Face; Politeness; Pragmatic failure; Public buildings; Public relations; Relationship-building; Scholarship; Pragmatic failure; Public relations; Relationship-building; Face; Politeness
• ISSN: 0363-8111; 1873-4537
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2019.05.005

•Politeness theory can inform our understanding of public relationship building and maintenance.•Effective public relations practitioners apply politeness strategies to reduce misunderstandings in the communication process.•A lack of understanding of politeness strategies and norms can lead to paradigmatic failure.•Paradigmatic failure leads to an inability to build strong relationships with and within communities.•To enhance their cultural and interpersonal relationship-building competency, public relations students should be taught politeness theory. For more than thirty years, relationship-building has been recognized as central to public relations, and yet, exactly how practitioners go about building and maintaining relationships at the micro level has been insufficiently explored in public relations scholarship. Politeness, or a lack thereof, is ever-present in all communicative interactions, affecting the formation and development of relationships. There is therefore value in extending our understanding of how these relationships are impacted by (im)polite communicative acts. Principally, politeness attempts to balance participants’ face needs or needs for self-esteem through employing various strategies, and this article attempts to explicate the theory of politeness for public relations work. It concludes that an understanding of the fundamentals of politeness theory and strategies enables practitioners to be more effective at building relationships within and across communities, avoiding potential pragmatic failure.